How to Use Instagram To Dramatically Improve Your Business: “Utilize Gary Vee’s $1.80 rule” With Becca Booker of Homemade Social & Candice Georgiadis
Utilize Gary Vee’s $1.80 rule. This is my favorite trick to recommend to clients. However, it takes quite a bit of time! You can read up on the technique here, but basically the idea is to comment highly engaging comments on other account’s posts that would be likely to engage with you and follow you.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Becca Booker, Owner of Homemade Social. A Northern California native living in the heat of Phoenix, Arizona, Becca Booker owns Homemade Social, a boutique social media marketing agency. After attending ASU and double-majoring in Marketing and Journalism, Becca started her agency to work hands-on with small- to medium-sized lifestyle brands and businesses to implement social media and Facebook advertising strategies to elevate their brand and reach.
Becca understands that creating messaging for lifestyle brands is a long-term game of strategy, not just cranking out day-to-day content. She works to understand her client’s goals and provides seamless integration with other components of the consumer experience to ensure exponential growth.
Plus, she loves corgis.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
It’s a pleasure! I was honestly one of those kids who knew what I wanted to do since like 8th grade. I have always had an interest in social media and have always been great at getting engagement on it (I’d use click bait techniques to get more responses on my MySpace Discussion Boards).
I was an early adapter to both Facebook and Instagram, and when I was in college I was voted my sorority’s second ever “Instagram Chair” — meaning I was in charge of running our public social media account with the goal of attracting new members. That was the first time I had ever managed an account other than my personal one, and I took it and ran with it. I created graphics, liked photos of relevant hashtags hoping the users would follow us back, etc. I got quite a few internships in social media from this position alone, and ended up working as the Marketing Director for Bloguettes shortly after I graduated college.
While employed full-time, I started doing freelance social media management on the side for extra money and took an online course in managing Facebook Advertising. I saw a huge need to help entrepreneurs who were often lost & too busy to be handling their brand’s social media accounts. I started my company (full-time) in October of 2017 to help small businesses exponentially grow their social media and have grown to a team of 4 since!
Can you explain to our readers why you are an authority about Social Media Marketing?
As the founder of a leading Social Media Marketing Agency based in Phoenix, our strategies have landed us clients across e-commerce, fashion, lifestyle, and real estate and have enabled us to exponentially grow their social media following and drive sales and growth.
In a quickly-evolving and ever-changing industry like social media, my team and I put education & innovation first so we can stay ahead of the trends for our clients. I find it’s increasingly important to be hands-on with social media so that we can adapt strategies whenever algorithms change or new features are released.
As both an influencer and the owner of a social media marketing agency, I have the advantage of being able to see how various social media strategies affect both influencers and brands. Some techniques that work for one won’t work for the other!
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?
I’ve actually be surprised several times at how many agencies have purchased fake followers on Instagram for their clients. I once took over a client’s account after they had been working with another agency, and when I started posting content for them our engagement dropped 70%. Turns out the previous agency had been buying likes/followers to fake results to the client!
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Back in the day, Instagram didn’t allow you to be logged into multiple accounts at the same time. I was still managing multiple accounts at the time — one of them being an online pet retailer — and I accidentally posted a puppy picture to another client’s account (who was a lawyer! lol). I had a slight panic attack and didn’t notice the slip up for a good 15 minutes, but the client never said anything about it. Phew!
Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?
Instagram story advertising!! Hands down. If you can create a short, compelling 15-second video that doesn’t look too much like an ad, it will really intrigue viewers to swipe up and check out whichever product or service you may be offering. I had a client utilize Instagram Story Ads to prompt viewers to get on her email list (in exchange for a freebie) and she got 359 leads for $2.96 a piece! With a potential lifetime value of $500 — that campaign had a huge return for her!
Let’s talk about Instagram specifically, now. Can you share 6 ways to leverage Instagram to dramatically improve your business? Please share a story or example for each.
- Utilize Gary Vee’s $1.80 rule. This is my favorite trick to recommend to clients. However, it takes quite a bit of time! You can read up on the technique here, but basically the idea is to comment highly engaging comments on other account’s posts that would be likely to engage with you and follow you.
- If you’re in a service-based business, have a freebie on your website and encourage people to download it in your bio! This is a great way to get leads and build your repudiability to your ideal audience.
- Instagram Stories is a great tool to show the behind the scenes of your business. If you’re in a service-based business, you as the business owner can show a “day in the life” of going to meetings, making decisions, and team outings. As a product-based business, try polling your audience (using the Poll or Question sticker) on what colors they like, what they love about their favorite product of yours, and what they want to see next!
- Sync your e-commerce store with your Facebook account (and make sure it’s connected to your Instagram account) so that you can tag your products directly on Instagram. Shopify should connect really easily. This will help with your conversion rates so users can click directly to the product on your website that you are posting about.
- Use the same filter on every photo. This is a great tip for making your Instagram account appear more cohesive and on-brand. Find a filter that works for your brand (ie. light & white, saturated, pink-tones, etc.) and stick to it. This way, whenever you post a new photo, your audience will get used to your style and will be able to tell it’s your photo without even seeing your name attached to it!
- Quality over quantity — don’t post just to post! So many people feel the need to share content daily, but it’s more important to share content that serves a purpose to your audience. Always aim to educate, inspire, or entertain your audience with every post!
Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I wish the blogging & influencer industry was more sustainable. The amount of packages a blogger receives in the mail each day is insane. Not only is there so much cardboard going to waste getting the products to the blogger, but brands often send MORE than enough product for the blogger to actually use, so a lot of it ends up getting thrown out or expires before the influencer can use it.
Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Sara Blakely! The owner of Spanx. I love how transparent she is about owning & operating a business and how she still shares her fails as both a boss and a mom. If you’re looking for a motivating podcast, her episode on “How I Built This” by Guy Raz cracked me up! She’s so inspiring.
Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!
How to Use Instagram To Dramatically Improve Your Business: “Utilize Gary Vee’s $1.80 was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.